Sophie Aldred was born in August 1962 in Greenwich, and grew up in the South East London area of Blackheath.

After leaving school, she attended Manchester University, where she earned an honours degree in drama. Her first professional experience was as a singer in working men's clubs, so as to obtain her Equity Card. . She went on to work extensively in children's theatre, as well as appearing in a fringe show, Underground Man, at a pub theatre in London, which garnered her an agent. She was appearing in Fiddler on the Roof in Manchester, along with Topol and Doctor Who veteran John Scott Martin, when she heard that she had landed the part of Ace. This was her first television role.

At the same time as appearing in Doctor Who, she presented a series for young children, Corners and later, as Maureen in, Melvin and Maureen's Music-a-grams which allowed her to show off her considerable musical and singing talents

After leaving Doctor Who she continued to make numerous other children's television appearances: twelve different characters in Knock Knock, a reporter in Knowhow, a singer in The Box, a storyteller in Jackanory, a presenter in Jack in the Box, and a presenter/singer in Words and Pictures. She has also appeared in a number of theatre productions including a tour of Daisy Pulls it Off in which she played the lead role. She played Marjorie Pinchwite in the 1993 West End production of Lust, a version of The Country Wife and in 1993 she appeared as 'naughty girl Suzie in two episodes of the popular BBC soap EastEnders.

In 1995 she worked for the Children's Channel on satellite and also Love Call Live for Anglia television with David 'Kid' Jensen. In 1996, she co-authored, with Doctor Who effects designer Mike Tucker, a book looking at her time in the show called Ace!.

More recently she has provided the voice of Dennis in the children's television series Dennis & Gnasher and the voice of Tom in Tree Fu Tom.

Sophie Aldred has been involved in other Doctor Who related work including various direct to video and audio stories including being reunited with Sylvester McCoy in the continuing Big Finish Productions audio adventures.

The last companion of the original television era, Ace is also remembered for the particularly close relationship she shared with her Doctor, Ace's bond with the Seventh Doctor often approaching a father/daughter bond rather than the more traditional Doctor/Companion dynamic.

Dragonfire

Originating from the village of Perivale, Dorothy McShane - named after the title character of The Wizard of Oz due to her grandmother's fondness for the story ("Love
and War- was a wild child from the beginning, preferring to be known by the nickname 'Ace' rather than her birth name, to the point where she felt that her parents couldn't be her real parents as she felt that her true parents would never have given her 'a naff name like Dorothy' ("Dragonfire"). Although evidently intelligent, she had little real interest in conventional academics, to the point that she failed her O-level chemistry despite her ability to make her own explosives, and experienced a difficult upbringing due to her tense relationship with her mother and the death of her best friend, Manisha, when she was thirteen after Manisha's apartment was firebombed by racists ("Blood Heat"). Manisha's death prompted Ace to burn down the abandoned house Gabriel Chase due to her awareness of the evil within it ("Ghost Light") and a need to act out against such evil, Ace continuing her vandalism streak when she blew up the school art department as a teenager (Although in both cases she always ensured nobody was in the buildings when she 'attacked').

Despite her unorthodox talents, Ace's life may have never amounted to much until she was caught up in a time storm that she apparently created during an experiment, resulting in her being sent over two thousand years into the future, where she arrived on the trading post of Iceworld ("Dragonfire"). With her options limited, she was employed as a waitress in the local café until the Seventh Doctor and his companion Melanie Bush arrived on Iceworld, investigating rumours of a dragon guarding treasure in the caverns, pitting them against Iceworld's insane commander Kane when the treasure was revealed to be a power source for his ship. Following Kane's death when he learned that he could never achieve the revenge he sought, Mel departed with their ally Sabalom Glitz, hoping to reform him, while Ace accepted The Doctor's invitation to travel with him.

Remembrance of the Daleks

From the beginning, Ace and The Doctor had a close relationship, Ace affectionately calling The Doctor 'Professor' and coming to regard him as an unofficial fatherly figure, the two often teasing each other affectionately in their lighter moments despite Ace's use of sarcasm as a defence mechanism and The Doctor's own manipulations. Although Ace initially expressed jealousy of The Doctor's old friend The Brigadier when she met him during their confrontation with Morgraine le Fay, regarding looking after The Doctor as 'her' job, she soon came to respect the old soldier ("Battlefield"), once sacrificing a chance to resurrect someone she loved to save The Brigadier's life simply for The Doctor's sake ("No Future"). The Doctor in turn often made several trips in the TARDIS based on what Ace wanted or needed to do, such as taking her home to Perivale to visit old friends ("Survival") or taking her to Gabriel Chase in the past to confront the evil that she had sensed there as a child, revealed to be the 'death' of the deranged entity known as Light ("Ghost Light"), both to satisfy his curiosity and help Ace confront her past. One trip coincidentally resulted in Ace meeting her previously-unknown younger brother Liam, four years her junior, who had been taken away by their father after their mother had an affair shortly after his birth, Liam only learning about his sister shortly before his father's death ("The Rapture"). Although initially reluctant to accommodate a brother into the complex tale that her life had become, the siblings bonded when Liam helped her and The Doctor thwart an alien invasion; while Liam decided to remain on Earth as he felt incapable of coping with Ace's life, Ace noted that his existence gave her something to look forward to if she ever went back to Earth.

Despite their original closeness, Ace's relationship with The Doctor became more complicated when the truth about the time-storm that sent Ace to the future was revealed when The Doctor and Ace arrived in 1944 and discovered the ancient entity known as Fenric, imprisoned by The Doctor centuries ago and manipulating events to allow himself to escape ("The Curse of Fenric"). Despite The Doctor's attempts to rally the residents of the military base against Fenric - aided by a Russian troop that had come to take a code-breaking machine for themselves -, Fenric's escape appeared inevitable when Ace provided him with a vital clue to defeat the puzzle The Doctor had been using to delay him; Ace was one of Fenric's 'wolves', a descendant of those who had trapped Fenric in the past and now genetically bound to serve him even if she had no conscious control over her ties to him, such as inadvertently providing Fenric with vital information. Although The Doctor was able to assure Ace that he hadn't simply spent time with her because of her ties to Fenric, the entity remained a difficult topic for Ace, to the extent that The Doctor told later companion Benny that she should never ask Ace about Fenric ("All-Consuming Fire"); during a later encounter, Fenric mocked Ace by pointing out that, even though she hated him, she was simultaneously unable to remove his influence from her life as it was only because of Fenric that she had met The Doctor and had the opportunity to accomplish so much (Fenric claimed that Ace would have become a single mother at eighteen if he hadn't sent her to The Doctor, but considering his nature he may have been lying or exaggerating) ("Gods and Monsters").

Silver Nemesis

Even without encountering Fenric, Ace's time in the TARDIS was particularly difficult; one adventure even resulted in her being killed by the insane time traveller George Limb ("Illegal Aliensv) as part of his plan to ensure that The Doctor would arrive in that time period to help Limb learn how to control his time machine, Ace only being 'resurrected' when the subsequent collapse of reality caused by Limb's repeated use of his time machine caused several alternate timelines to come together, including a world where she was never killed ("Loving the Alien"). Their pursuit of the powerful Timewyrm - an ancient monster from Time Lord myth that was unintentionally created by The Doctor's actions ("Timewyrm: Genesys") - was particularly challenging as it concluded in The Doctor's mind, the Timewyrm using Ace to infiltrate the mind as she was a familiar presence that The Doctor would accept, Ace being forced to go deeper into the mind and face both her childhood bully and The Doctor's own grief to rescue his repressed conscience - personified as the Fifth Doctor - and convince The Doctor to find another way to stop his foe ("Timewyrm:
Revelation"). For a time, Ace contemplated reverting to her original name of Dorothy to reflect her more adult perspective on recent events that she had witnessed in The Doctor's company ("Colditz"), but she eventually concluded that Ace better reflected who she was as a person overall and returned to that name ("Live 34"). Regardless of her chosen name, Ace remained a very strong-willed person, varying only in terms of her experience and capabilities in her time with The Doctor, always willing to stand up for what she believed in; one adventure notably saw her deliberately destroy her own eardrums to ensure that she couldn't be influenced by the Scourge, a race who could make people do what they wanted just by speaking to others ("The Shadow of the Scourge"). Her potential was so great that The Doctor briefly contemplated arranging for her to attend the Academy on Gallifrey, but Ace declined this opportunity when offered ("Thin Ice"), her and The Doctor later reflecting that she was better as her traditional independent self ("Lungbarrow").

Despite Ace's interest in explosives running contrary to the Time Lord's more pacifist approach, The Doctor generally tolerated this 'quirk' of her personality as he trusted her not to use the explosives against innocent people and only bring out the bombs when circumstances demanded it, such as when they needed a weapon to use against an attacking Dalek in 1963 ("Remembrance of the Daleks"). However, after Ace spent three years in the space fleet fighting Daleks, The Doctor sometimes resorted to more decisive measure to prevent Ace taking action, such as removing the power cell from her weapons ("The Left-Handed Hummingbird"), even if he was willing to allow her to take action when the situation required more physical methods than he was comfortable with. Despite the skills she developed in Space Fleet, she was not a violent person by nature; prior to her first departure, when exposed to the planet of the Cheetah People, which caused visitors to regress to a more feral state, Ace's cheetah side primarily focused on being free and protecting others, as opposed to the more feral transformations experienced by The Master and one of Ace's old friends ("Survival"), even if her temporary regression to a Cheetah person remained one of her greatest fears ("Matrix").

Ghost Light

When a trip to London 2021 to stop a Cyberman attempt to infiltrate Earth resulted in them acquiring a new companion in the form of Thomas Hector Schofield - known to all as 'Hex' - ("The Harvest"), Ace took him under her wing to teach him about how to deal with life in the TARDIS. It was implied on some occasions that Hex had feelings for Ace, once asking her if she would come with him if he ever left the TARDIS, but Ace only ever responded to him in a fraternal manner, giving no indication whether or not she was aware of his deeper feelings ("The Settling"). Hex's interest in Ace as a potential partner eventually seemed to cease when Hex began to feel uncomfortable with his life travelling through time and space, noting once that Ace seemed to be born for this life while he wasn't sure if he was the right person to travel with The Doctor ("Enemy of the Daleks"), although he still respected her experience enough to defer to her 'leadership' when The Doctor was absent ("The Magic Mousetrap"). Despite Hex's complicated feelings, Ace was nevertheless generally very fond of him, regarding him as a younger brother, expressing a great deal of grief and anger when he sacrificed himself to stop Fenric even though it had been his choice ("Gods and Monsters"), although she was comforted when she learned that he had been returned to Earth after winning a wager with Fenric, albeit without his memories ("Afterlife").

Their relationship already tense after their 'rematch' with Fenric, The Doctor and Ace's relationship went through a particularly rough patch after The Doctor allowed Jan, a young man Ace had developed feelings for, to be in a position where he would die of an alien infection because he was jealous - only learning that Jan had also been infected with an alien parasite after the fact - ("Love and War"), prompting Ace to leave The Doctor for three years as she joined the Space Fleet of the future, becoming a hardened soldier in the Dalek wars equipped with various personally-modified hand-weapons, although she retained enough of her old self to sometimes fear the killer she had become ("White Darkness"). She eventually returned to the TARDIS in time to help The Doctor defeat a demonic infection that had recently contaminated the ship - The Doctor revealing that he had actually influenced Ace's decision to leave him so that she could return to help him cure the ship by restoring his memories, the virus's control of the TARDIS telepathic circuits meaning that he had to avoid consciously thinking about it so that he could plan how to stop it ("Deceit") -, Ace rejoining The Doctor at least partly to carry out orders to find out the reason for a mysterious blockade erected around the Lucifer system ("Lucifer Rising"), learning that it was the result of a terraforming experiment that went out of hand. Although Ace continued to travel with The Doctor after this 'mission' was concluded, she and The Doctor remained uncomfortable around each other, Ace resenting some of The Doctor's darker decisions and his attempts to prevent her taking the violent action that she had come to believe was necessary, as well as his manipulations resulting in the deaths of innocents for the 'greater good' ("Blood Heat") even if he made it clear that he wished he could find another way. Eventually, however, the two reconciled after Ace was nearly manipulated into betraying The Doctor by his old foe, the Meddling Monk ("No Future"), Ace recognising that, even if she didn't always approve of The Doctor's actions, he was still willing to accept responsibility for his mistakes and appreciate the world as it was, rather than the Monk's attempts to enforce his will on the world whenever he didn't like what he saw.

The Curse of Fenric

Their relationship repaired after the confrontation with the Monk, the dynamic between The Doctor, Ace and Benny became far more casual once more, the trio continuing their travels with less of a focus on The Doctor's usual manipulations and ambiguities; one trip helped Ace deal with some of her remaining issues from her time on the Cheetah People's planet ("Survival") when she confronted and defeated The Master, who had caused the death of some of her friends during that crisis (Although he subsequently regenerated thanks to new nanites supplied by the Tzun) ("First Frontier"). However, Ace still had to deal with her darker impulses; although another occasion saw her and Benny acting against The Doctor's wishes by setting up a spaceship carrying the fanatical Chapter of St Anthony - a religious group who believed pain was the path to purity that had briefly brainwashed Ace to serve them - to explode after the TARDIS left when The Doctor had been content to let the Chapter be punished by traditional justice ("St Anthony's Fire"), although Ace later noted that she found vengeance fundamentally unsatisfying when she killed the time-manipulating Gabriel and Tanith, who had been attacking them with various alternate timelines negated by the actions of time-travellers ("Falls the Shadow"). Ace eventually set up shop as 'Time's Vigilante', operating from Paris 1887 and travelling through time on a motorcycle-mounted Time Hopper via a series of temporal rifts located around Earth that had been created by a malfunctioning time machine, essentially doing what The Doctor did on a smaller scale as she had recognised that making smaller changes was sometimes better than doing nothing ("Set Piece") (One mission saw her thwarting an alien invasion in the 1850s just by mentioning The Doctor's name).

Survival

Despite her departure, Ace ended up working with The Doctor again on at least three other occasions, helping him and his current companions fend off his deranged fictional counterpart 'Dr. Who' ("Head Games"), attending Benny's wedding ("Happy Endings"), and assisting past companions Romana and Leela in thwarting a Time Lord conspiracy trying to learn the truth about The Doctor's past and the disappearance of his former family house ("Lungbarrow"). Although Ace and The Doctor have never met after his regeneration into his eighth incarnation, during a recent adventure where the Eleventh Doctor met his former companions Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith, when discussing other old friends of The Doctor, Sarah mentioned a woman named Dorothy who runs an organisation known as A Charitable Earth who has some connection to The Doctor ("Death of The Doctor"), suggesting that Ace still lives despite the devastation of the Time War that annihilated the Daleks and the Time Lords ("The Day of The Doctor") - a conflict that she would likely have been conscripted into due to her experience with both sides - although it is unclear how much of her history remains intact.

Memorable
Moment

No Future
(Paul Cornell)

Ace has had several classic moments, but her two best took place during the Virgin New Adventures. When facing the powerful time-manipulating adversaries Timewyrm and the Meddling Monk, despite their efforts to convince her that The Doctor couldn't be trusted - The Monk even prepared to save Ace's dead lover and take her as his companion - Ace not only reaffirmed her faith in The Doctor, but triumphed in a situation where even The Doctor had doubt, restoring The Doctor's conscience and inspiring him to find another way to stop the Timewyrm ("Timewyrm:
Revelation") and sacrificing a chance to save her lover in favour of saving The Doctor's friend despite how he had used her in the past ("No Future").